Franz Dischinger

Who was Franz Dischinger?

Franz Dischinger was a pioneering German civil and structural engineer, responsible for the development of the modern cable-stayed bridge. He was also a pioneer of the use of prestressed concrete, patenting the technique of external prestressing in 1934.

After completing Gymnasium in Karlsruhe, Germany, Dischinger went to the Technical University in Karlsruhe where he studied and received a degree in building engineering. After getting his degree in 1913, he then started working for Dyckerhoff & Widmann A.G., an engineering firm in Germany. In 1928 Dischinger went back to school to receive his doctorate at the Technical School in Dresden, Germany.

In 1922, he designed the Zeiss Planetarium in Jena with Walther Bauersfeld, using a thin-shell concrete roof in the shape of a hemisphere. Their system was subsequently patented, and Dischinger published a paper on the relevant mathematics in 1928.

Since the previous stay and cable bridges in Dischinger's opinion were both flawed technically and disturbing looking, he decided to publish his own cable stayed bridge. This design has been used ever since, more than 100 of these cable stayed bridges have been built.